APPENDIX. 301 



pestle, which is operated by a lever worked with the feet. It is a 

 slow and laborious process, not nearly so perfect in its results as 

 the work of our rice-mills, yet immense quantities of rice are 

 cleaned in this way. 



Clothes are washed by dipping them into the water and then 

 slapping them over rocks and stones. At first this seemed to me 

 as if it must be bad for the clothes, but as yet I have detected no 

 evidence of undue wear and tear in my own, and certainly both 

 Chinese and Japanese laundrymen do their work well and cheaply 

 — two cents per piece being the customary price in Japan, and 

 three cents in China, this including large as well as small pieces. 



Chinese kites are an institution ; we happened to be in Canton 

 just in the season when the greatest numbers of them are being 

 flown. They are made in all sorts of fantastic shapes, figures of 

 birds, insects, and men being represented, together with many 

 fanciful designs which only a Chinaman could invent. During 

 favorable weather one can see scores of these fiying in every 

 direction, some of them attaining (what seemed to me) a greater 

 height than any I had ever before noticed. 



The principal currency here, and indeed throughout China, are 

 Mexican dollars ; and a heavy, clumsy, inconvenient currency they 

 are. If you wish to make any considerable purchase, you have to 

 carry about with you a weight of money which is exceedingly in- 

 convenient, and which makes one long for an equivalent in green- 

 backs. There are occasionally counterfeits among them, and to 

 insure their genuineness and enable them to be traced from hand 

 to hand, the Chinese have a way of stamping with a little steel 

 punch or die the private mark of the person paying them out. 

 By this practice the dollars gradually become so defaced that it is 

 impossible to identify them, and so abraded that they are finally 

 broken up into fragments, which serve as small change by weigh- 

 ing them, every Chinese dealer having a pair of tiny scales for 

 this purpose. 



The Chinese have also an original way of taking your meas- 

 ure for a suit of clothes. The measurer, who is usually the 

 cutter, takes a long, thin tape of tough paper, goes through the 

 usual motions, but instead of calling out the numbers and hav- 

 ing them put down in a book, he simply nips off a small piece 



